Matteo di Giovanni’s lost altarpiece for Sant’Agostino, Asciano

Appendix: Travel notes of Ettore Romagnoli

Ettore Romagnoli’s mention of Matteo di Giovanni’s Asciano altarpiece has long been known, but his unpublished travel notes of 27 September 1800, on which his later account is based, offer some more detail:

The predella of the high altarpiece, with works by Giovanni di Asciano, is in the sacristy, and in the wood store of the convent I had the chance to save from fire a very famous work by Domenico Bartoli, in which there are Peruginesque figures. The work I am referring to consists of an ensemble of triangular and rectangular panels, all with admirable, excellently drawn little figures, and large figures that are finely finished and well worked, and very beautiful gold decoration. Some parts of it have already been burned, and in the old times these panels formed a large painting placed in the room located to the right of the high altar, as one goes towards the door. The Father Prior, to whom I suggested saving this outstanding masterpiece, promised to put it back in the choir. [Added above: ‘in 1801 he had it placed in the choir’.]32

On 15 September 1810, Romagnoli returned to Asciano, and described the National Gallery ‘Assumption’ in the sacristy of Sant’Agostino, now with the correct attribution to Matteo di Giovanni:

In Sant'Agostino […] the very beautiful painting by Matteo in the sacristy is painted with great affection. It depicts the Virgin Mary in glory among very beautiful little angels.33

It is unfortunately unclear what predella ('gradino') Romagnoli saw in the sacristy in 1800, but it was possibly the predella of the ‘Assumption’ altarpiece discussed here. Indeed, Romagnoli attributed parts of the ‘Assumption’ altarpiece (identifiable with the lateral panels, pinnacles, and/or the pilaster fragments) to Giovanni d’Asciano elsewhere as well, for example, in his biography of that artist:

In 1800, besides a very beautiful panel by Domenico Bartoli, I found four or five pieces of panel painted by our artist [Giovanni d’Asciano] in the woodstore of Sant’Agostino in Asciano. Some others had already been burned but I managed to convince the Prior to conserve whatever was still there. He judiciously did so and placed them in the choir of that church where they can still be seen. They depict various saints.’34

This last account is based on Romagnoli's 1800 travel notes in which he mentioned the same fragments as Giovanni d’Asciano's works immediately after his long description of Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio's 'Nativity' altarpiece, which he attributed to Giovanni d'Asciano (on the second altar to the left): 'Of this follower of [Si]Mone, there are a further four or five works of the same beauty in the woodstore'.35

During his 1800 Asciano visit, Romagnoli tended to ascribe Lippesque and Sassettesque works to Giovanni d’Asciano (in reality by the Memmi workshop, Sano di Pietro, Pietro di Giovanni, and Pietro di Rufolo) and Matteo di Giovanni’s works to Domenico to Bartolo and Girolamo di Benvenuto, but his attributions are too vague to rule out that the predella and the ‘four or five fragments’ he ascribed to Giovanni d’Asciano in fact belonged to Matteo’s ‘Assumption’ altarpiece.

Alternatively, other mid-fifteenth-century predellas that Romagnoli might have seen in the sacristy in 1800 include the now lost predella of the 'Nativity' altarpiece and the predella of one of Matteo di Giovanni's two altarpieces painted much earlier for the church, around 1460, for Jacomo Scotti.36 In 1800 Romagnoli documented the predella of one of these altarpieces surmounted by the main register of the other one on the second altar to the right (with the exception of the miracle-working central panel depicting the 'Virgin and Child', which, as he notes, had been moved to the high altar by that time). The 'Nativity' by Pietro di Giovanni and the extant parts of Matteo di Giovanni's two early altarpieces are now in the Museo di Palazzo Corboli of Asciano.